


Sort of Close, I Guess

by SpaceNugget11



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Gen Work, Good Uncle Kenny Ackerman, Maybe Kenny and Kuchel used to be on okay terms, Multi, No Titans, Sort Of, The Underground, but i'm not sorry., family reunion!, just humans, not really - Freeform, that was a horrible joke, until Kenny did a Kenny Thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-06-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:07:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24457918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceNugget11/pseuds/SpaceNugget11
Summary: The kid looks just like his mom. Kenny should rephrase: the kid looks just like the corpse of his mom. A straight up skeleton-boy with gray skin stretched tight over bones.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 52





	1. Sort of Close, I guess

Kenny Ackerman finds his nephew in a dark cramped room of the whorehouse where his dead whore of a sister had worked. It had been a long time since he and Kuchel had spoken.

They used to be sort-of-close-I-guess, but ever since Kenny had killed her boyfriend at the time they stopped being sort-of-close-I-guess. Kenny still didn’t know why she got so pissed. The guy was an annoying son-of-a-bitch to begin with. Then he hit Kuchel, so Kenny had hit back harder. With a knife. Boom. Justice. So what was the problem?

Kuchel never told him what the problem was, but apparently there was one, because right afterwards, she had a huge cow about it. Maybe it was because he got blood between the floorboards.

“I’ve had it with you damn Ackermans!” She had wailed, and Kenny had given her a nasty little smile and told her she was an Ackerman, too, you idiot, so she stormed right out their little shack with the leaky roof and mice underfoot in a great big huff and never came back. Women.

They never spoke after that, but Kenny always put out a few ears and eyes for her. The reports were never great—begging on the streets, laying with men for food, the occasional needle— but that was unsurprising. This was The Underground after all, and Kuchel didn’t have much apart from her big black eyes and jet black hair. He told his boys to “handle it” if men ever tried Anything Funny with his idiot sister. But she was an Ackerman, too, and his boys reported that after some bozo had tried Anything Funny with her, she had sent the guy flying. Literally. The would-be-attacker-now-victim had cleared a good ten yards before he landed in a nearby cart with a broken neck.

After that, Kenny stopped putting so many ears and eyes out for her, though maybe that hadn’t been the best idea because soon after, Kuchel disappeared. She had gone too deep into The Underground for him to follow, which was, for a number of reasons, frightfully deep. Then word of her came across his desk a few years later, and he heard she was working over by the whorehouses in the Eastern Edge.

“Well, goddamn,” was all Kenny could say, because not even he, with all the little murders and thieveries notching his belt had any business in the Eastern Edge. Then he remembered: she had gone frightfully deep.

And then he heard she had a kid.

“Well, god-fucking-damn,” he had said to that.

Eventually, he decided to pay her a visit, because she was still an Ackerman, too, even if she was his idiot sister. After a kicking in a few teeth here and a persuasive knife to the neck there, bada-boom-bada-bing, Kenny figured out exactly where his idiot sister was, and that’s how Kenny finds his nephew in a dark cramped room of the whorehouse where his dead whore of a sister had worked.

The kid looks just like his mom. Kenny should rephrase: the kid looks just like the corpse of his mom. A straight up skeleton-boy with gray skin stretched tight over bones.

“She’s dead,” the skeleton-boy tells him when Kenny hollers a bunch of insults at his sister in greeting (after all, they used to be sort-of-close-I-guess).

For a second, Kenny thinks the kid’s saying, “I’m dead,” and considering the kid looks just like his mom, Kenny could believe it (the hearing in his right ear’s been a bit off lately, too). Then he realizes the kid’s talking about his mom. Kenny’s sister, Kuchel. The one he used to be sort-of-close-I-guess with. She’s dead.

He doesn’t know why it feels like the rug’s been ripped clean out from beneath him. After all, it wasn’t like they were close, they were just sort-of-close-I-guess. Still, she was his idiot sister, and an Ackerman, too, so Kenny finds the ground tip queerly and then he’s on the floor of the whorehouse next to the corpse of his whore sister, sitting across from her boy. It’s a boy right?

“Levi. Just Levi,” the kid tells him, and Kenny’s got to laugh at that. It seemed like even when she was leaving for the doors of Hell, his sister’s still had it with the damn Ackermans. A stubborn little idiot to the end. Definitely an Ackerman, too.

Kenny decides to tip his hat to his dead sister Kuchel, and because I’ve-Had-It-With-You-Damn-Ackermans is too much of a mouthful, he tells Just Levi with a wry smile, “I’m Kenny. Just Kenny.”

After all, he and Kuchel used to be sort-of-close-I-guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Funny how this came about. I was writing this as part of a Levi-centric story, and then Kenny just kicked down the door, guns blazing, and highjacked the entire scene. So now I guess he's going to get a small two-part series for himself. 
> 
> Those damn Ackermans.


	2. Just Kenny

Kenny has gone from being Kenny Ackerman to Kenny I’ve-Had-it-With-You-Damn-Ackermans to Just Kenny. Plus, now he has a kid. Kenny would have figured Hell had frozen over because he has a kid, but there's not a speck of ice in The Underground, so that couldn’t be right.

Kenny has a kid.

Okay, well, technically, it’s his dead whore of a sister’s kid, so now the kid’s a bastard _and_ an orphan. Kenny’s never been the latter, but he’s a bastard in every sense of the word, so he figures there might be some common ground there. He’s not great with kids.

It’s a kid right? A boy? That’s been established?

Well, Kenny figures it’ll get figured out eventually, and if it didn’t, genders were for squares anyways; whether you were a man, woman, kid, or someone in between, The Underground came for you indiscriminately, no buts about it. Life down here was beautifully raw in that way— _The Great Equalizer_ , Kenny would sometimes think in his more poetic moments.

When he wasn’t feeling so poetic, The Underground was humanity’s cesspool, and he was the bastard that would rule it all someday; he would own everything: from the scum slicking up the gutters to the dead bodies rotting off piece by piece in the sewage below, to the whores down by the Eastern Edge, down to the lost souls plodding dead-eye and aimless over the shit covered streets—all of it would be his. He would reign king over this little hellhole that even God Himself had long abandoned. Why? Well why the fuck not? He was curious. Everyone always wants to be God, but no one ever tries to play the Devil.

Which was why having a kid threw a fucking wrench into the whole entire thing. Now how the _hell_ was he supposed to get around being the Devil with a skeleton-boy hanging around his neck? The kid was basically a goddamn noose! He’d get no goddamn respect. Everyone would say “ol’ Kenny’s gone soft” right before they try and slip a blade between his ribs when he wasn’t looking. 

But then, he and Kuchel, you know? They used to be sort-of-close-I-guess, back when she’d bake ugly looking pies with scraps she'd dig up from the trash left outside the bakery. Despite being ugly as sin, however, the pies had tasted just like the slice of sunshine they were always so desperately craving. Night after night, his idiot sister would perform magic in their grimy little kitchen, and—sometimes— the smell from her spells would fill up their rundown little shack, squeezing into all the nooks and crevices it could find, and— sometimes— the spell would get so thick and rich that—sometimes— the shack _almost_ felt like home, and—sometimes—Kenny _almost_ forgot that they were all damned to die and rot in the slick gutters of this little hell hole that even God Himself had long abandoned.

_Almost_.

The Underground was humanity’s cesspool, and he was the bastard that would rule it all one day, but his sister was always forgetting that, which was why she was an idiot, and which was why she was now a dried up corpse in this whore house out in the Eastern Edge where even he never had any business. Yep, a right idiot who would always cry too much when he came home with blood on his clothes and cooked up spells every night in their kitchen that put odd thoughts in their heads. A right idiot. But that was all so long ago when they had last been so sort-of-close-I-guess.

But because they _had_ been sort-of-close-I-guess, Kenny takes Just Levi under his arm (how the hell are you supposed to hold these things, anyways?) and walks out of that closet of a room, leaving his idiot corpse of a sister behind in the dark.

And he decides Just Levi was never going to be an idiot like his sister, because even if he had tipped his hat to his dead sister and told the kid he was Just Kenny, and not Kenny Ackerman, Levi was still an Ackerman, too. He decides as he makes his way home with the straight up skeleton-boy tucked under his arm—and so _goddamn light, jesus—_ that there was no way another Ackerman, too would die a dog’s death in the dark like that ever again. 

So he tosses Just Levi some scraps until the kid can hold bread on his own, and then pretty soon, Kenny tosses the kid a blade, and Just Levi holds it like a natural, like he had been born into the world with it. And Just Levi, Kenny can see, may look like his dead mother, but he’ll never be an idiot like her. The look in the kid’s eyes has a certain cut to it, and Kenny figures the kid’s going to turn out to be even less of an idiot than him; there were no nooks and crevices in that rock-hard gaze. 

So Kenny shows the kids the basics: killing, threatening, stealing, extorting—all in that order (he’s a big believer in starting with the hardest lessons first). And just like holding the knife, Just Levi’s a goddamn natural, because he is an Ackerman, too.

Oh, this kid was never going to be an idiot like his dead whore of a mother, his eyes are too sharp to ever fall under stupid spells made up of warm pies and slices of sunshine. Fucking good. 

And when one day, Kenny watches his nephew kick in the teeth of another man, just like he had taught him, Kenny Ackerman thinks that’s enough, because The Underground was humanity’s cesspool, and he was the bastard that would rule it all someday. Besides, no one would respect the Devil if he had a kid hanging around his neck. So he tips his hat to his dead whore of a sister, Kuchel You’re-an-Ackerman, too, and disappears into the crowd, taking with him the I’ve-Had-it-With-You-Damn-Ackermans, and leaving behind Just Levi.

After all, he and Kuchel had been sort-of-close-I-guess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I always thought Kenny was pretty fascinating as a character and wondered what motivated him to look for his sister and take Levi in. The man's a homicidal maniac, but he clearly has a soft spot in him somewhere.  
> 2\. This was a quick, off the cuff drabble piece I did, hence the overall lack of...well, anything substantial other than maybe a stream of thoughts lol. It was fun writing tho! Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.


End file.
